Warren: GOP Out to Kill Consumer Protection Agency

The Hill reports:

Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), on Friday dismissed Republican bills to alter the new agency as attempts to kill it.

House Republicans are pushing a handful of bills that would tweak the consumer agency authorized by the Wall Street reform law. The most noteworthy would change the top of the agency so it is run by a bipartisan commission instead of a single director, while other Republicans have called for the CFPB's funding to be brought under the appropriations process.

But Warren said in a speech that these proposals would "eliminate the consumer agency before it's born."

Republicans say a bipartisan commission is the right way to go because the CFPB, when it begins work in July, will be too powerful for a single director.

But Warren said such an idea would "make it less — not more — likely to achieve its stated goals."

Democrats have also argued the bill would limit the CFPB, especially at the outset, since it would require five nominees instead of one to be confirmed by the Senate.

As she has in the past, Warren also adamantly opposed bringing the CFPB's budget within the reach of congressional appropriators. Republicans complain the CFPB lacks oversight since Congress cannot set its budget, but Warren said such a move would force the CFPB to "kowtow in the face of powerful banking opposition."

"I fear, of course, that this is precisely the goal of the forces at work to politicize the CFPB's funding," she said.